Exotic pet store owners Debbie and Doug Grills are closing shop after a prolonged fight over a city pet ownership bylaw.

An exotic pet store in Oshawa has closed up shop, the latest twist in a prolonged bylaw battle between the owners and the city with 600 snakes, lizards and spiders caught in the middle.

“We lost so much business last year,” said Debbie Grills, who co-owns D & D Exotics in Oshawa with her husband Doug. “Our customers thought that the city had shut us down last year.”

The couple has had their home and business raided and Debbie Grills owes the city $24,000 in fines she refuses to pay, in part because the city has since changed the bylaw she was fined under.

The rules at the centre of the conflict are set out in Oshawa’s Responsible Pet Owners bylaw, which bans dozens of animals, including snakes more than three metres in length. An older version of the bylaw, which was in place until December 2012, banned all tarantulas, pythons and boas.

Bylaw officers and investigators from the Ministry of Natural Resources found hundreds of prohibited animals when they searched the Grills’ home in March 2012, according to Jerry Conlin, Oshawa’s director of Municipal Law Enforcement and Licensing Services.

“They were breeding these animals in their home,” Conlin said. “This was a residential property and such a use isn’t even permitted.”

The couple was fined $81,000, which was later reduced by a hearings officer to $16,000 in fines for Grills and $8,000 in late fees.

Grills said the snakes had been kept at the pet store, which city council had exempted from the bylaw in 2010.

“D & D Exotics represented that they were a safe haven for abandoned exotic animals, almost like a shelter for them,” Conlin said.

But last January the city revoked that exemption, saying the Grills had violated the conditions by selling prohibited animals.

Grills said the store did accept animals from the humane society and cared for them at their own expense, and the prohibited animals were sold to buyers from outside Oshawa.

“Nobody gave us money for all these rescues that we took in,” Grills said.

As a result of the back-and-forth with the city, Grills said sales dropped $70,000 last year, and she can no longer afford to pay rent on the store.

“Now I’ve got all these animals here that I’m having an awful time trying to rehome just so we can shut this business down,” Grills said.

The critters include boas, pythons, geckos, bearded dragons, chinchillas and more than 100 baby tarantulas, which are living in individual plastic containers. The updated rules mean all of the animals currently in the store are allowed, Grills said. But though the bylaw has been changed, the fines remain, and some of the animals found at the house are still prohibited.

“The changes to the bylaw would only have helped to a certain degree,” Conlin said.

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